Posts Tagged letters of note

Dwayne McDuffie (1962 – 2011)

Posted by mistergroonk in Comics, People Who Died on March 31, 2011

We sat on this post longer than any of our previous obit posts. It’s as if by not posting Dwayne McDuffie’s death we’d somehow keep it from being true. That was a silly thought and a mistake. All we’ve done is think about it in the weeks since.

McDuffie is the man responsible for igniting a new found love of the DCU. His stories on the animated series JUSTICE LEAGUE and JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED mixed Marvel’s soul and attention to real world mechanics with DC’s sentiment and inherent iconic nature.

McDuffie was about creating characters. The color of a person’s skin is a part of their life but it is not the end all and be all of said person. That’s the feeling we got from all of McDuffie’s characters.

McDuffie was a talented storyteller, well loved amongst his fans and peers and uncompromising. That is an almost impossible mix. In Dwayne McDuffie it became possible.

We shared a small correspondence with McDuffie many years ago. It’s doubtful he would have remembered it. Even then, years ago, he was a pretty big deal in comics. The fact that he took the time to respond to a “nobody” from Alabama spoke volumes to us about his character and made us realize one doesn’t have to give up being a nice guy to do well in writing.

Below is all the remembrance links we ran across in February.

Below the cut are a few choice moments that highlight his career in our eyes.

Read the rest of this entry »

, , , , , ,

No Comments

Aldous Huxley’s “Most Beautiful Death”

Posted by mistergroonk in History, People Who Died on April 19, 2010

Letters of Note remains one of the most delightful blogs in our weekly visits. Their purpose is archiving correspondences both fantastic and mundane. This one in particular is a touching detailed account of Huxley’s last days on this Earth.

Below we’ve shared the first page of Laura Huxley’s letter. See the actual pages and read the entire transcript on Letters of Note’s permalinked page.

via Letters of Note

, , , , ,

No Comments

“Holden Caulfield is Unactable” –J. D. Salinger (1919 – 2010)

Posted by mistergroonk in Books, People Who Died, USA on January 28, 2010

Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author’s son said in a statement from Salinger‘s literary representative. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.

“The Catcher in the Rye,” with its immortal teenage protagonist, the twisted, rebellious Holden Caulfield, came out in 1951, a time of anxious, Cold War conformity and the dawn of modern adolescence. The Book-of-the-Month Club, which made “Catcher” a featured selection, advised that for “anyone who has ever brought up a son” the novel will be “a source of wonder and delight – and concern.”

[…]

“I love to write and I assure you I write regularly,” Salinger said in a brief interview with the Baton Rouge (La.) Advocate in 1980. “But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.”

The passing of Salinger brought to mind a fairly new blog Letters of Note. On this blog there are two letters from Salinger. One, a response to an angst ridden first year college student that was desperate for writing advice. The second on his absolute refusal of allowing Catcher and the Rye being turned into a movie.

A tiny excerpt on Salinger’s reasoning behind why his book is unfilmable:

Holden Caulfield is unactable
And Holden Caulfield himself, in my undoubtedly super-biassed opinion, is essentially unactable. A Sensitive, Intelligent, Talented Young Actor in a Reversible Coat wouldn’t nearly be enough. It would take someone with X to bring it off, and no very young man even if he has X quite knows what to do with it. And, I might add, I don’t think any director can tell him.

, , , , ,

No Comments